on Virender Sehwag

He just stands there. Looking generally disinterested. People around the world are yelling, jumping, screaming, laughing. Mouths are wide open, jaws are on the floor. But he doesn’t react that way. He almost never does.

There is a flash outside off. The bat has missed the ball. Yet the same general look of disinterest and calmness he has after a boundary follows a play and miss. Other days he uses the same smile after his best shot, or his worst.

Playing and missing is supposed to be a test of who you are as a human being. Do you believe in luck, do you believe in hard work, do you believe in faith? In his case, none of these applied. As to whether the ball went into a scoreboard, into a crowd, onto a roof, or safely nestled in the keeper’s gloves, it was gone. Finished. That moment, that euphoria, that danger, doesn’t matter anymore. The greatest legcutter, the sexiest doosra, or a mystery ball fired from a cannon, it doesn’t matter. It could be a long hop. A full toss. It just goes past him. When you bowled to him, you weren’t bowling to a batsman; you were bowling to a belief system.